Why you need a qualified personal injury lawyer. How to deal with insurance companies and adjusters after an accident.
If you are injured in any type of accident (car accident, slip and fall, trip and fall, dog bite or attack, assault or any other way) due to the negligence or carelessness of someone else, you could be entitled to compensation. Chances are, the person responsible for your injuries has liability or other insurance that will cover your damages and can pay compensation. They can pay medical expenses, rehabilitation expenses, out of pocket expenses, lost wages, business losses and pain and suffering damages.
In most cases, the insurance company involved is simply not going to simply pay without question or proof; they will investigate, review, assess and try to limit what they should pay, or worse, not pay at all. The reasons for either reducing coverage or not paying at all are often, but not always, unreasonable and without merit. Remember that insurance companies are businesses and their adjusters are charged with reducing compensation claims, not maximizing them. Often, injured persons and their families meet with adjusters and insurers without a lawyer believing that their rights and interests are protected. This is not so. Do not be fooled into thinking the insurers and adjusters (especially the opposing party's insurer or adjuster) are meeting with you to write you a check.
Insurance companies hire highly trained lawyers, adjusters and investigators whose role is, in part, to protect against fraudulent claims and protect the insurance company's money. Insurers will find ways to limit or deny liability. They rarely pay claims because they want to, they pay claims because they have to!
That is why you need to level the playing field, but hiring an experienced personal injury lawyer whose job it is to protect your rights and interests; a lawyer that will fight on your behalf and obtain a settlement for you that is fair in all the circumstances.
Not all lawyers are qualified to represent injured persons!
Personal injury is a highly specialized area of law. Lawyers who practice in the area of accident and injury law have chosen to practice law in a very difficult specialty within the legal profession. The knowledge, training, skills and ongoing education needed to adequately represent persons injured in accidents is significant. It requires special knowledge of specific laws, procedures and ancillary disciplines such as insurance principles and medical concepts. The demands on a personal injury lawyer are quite different than lawyers in general practice. Simply knowing the general principles of law is not enough for a personal injury lawyer to successfully represent persons injured in accidents. Accident and personal injury lawyers specializing in these types of cases are dedicated to protecting the interests of injured persons. They have developed crucial relationships with insurance industry representatives, defence lawyers and all types of medical and financial experts needed to succeed in a personal injury case.
Good personal injury lawyers know when to hire the experts! Great personal injury lawyers know which experts to hire!
When someone experiences injuries, they need the assistance of health care professionals. They also need the support of other professionals. Unable to work, incurring loss of income and expenses and debts mounting, social, financial and emotional stressors, injured and often on mediation, the judgment of injured persons can be impaired. They need guidance and sound legal advice. The initial trauma of the injuries is only the beginning for victims of accidents. The stressors as indicated above can become significant, overwhelming. It can become easy to simply accept an insurance company's low ball offer; to settle a case quickly for unfair compensation. A personal injury lawyer can assist with the stresses that arise from suffering personal injury. There are community resources available and in some cases even companies that will financially assist injured persons until they receive their settlement. These companies loan funds to support the injured person and their family so they can survive until fair and reasonable compensation is paid.
With the assistance of qualified medical and financial experts and experienced personal injury lawyer, an injure person is better equipped to makes informed decisions about their case and increase the chances of obtaining fair compensation.
At Quinn Thiele Mineault Grodzki LLP, Ontario personal injury lawyers, we are a group of accident and injury lawyers and legal professionals focused on helping victims of accidents. We fight for your rights. We are confident, patient, experienced and knowledgeable lawyers willing to take every reasonable step necessary to obtain fair compensation for you, and if the insurer or negligent party will not settle or will only offer unfair compensation, we will start a case in Court and, if necessary, bring the case to trial. We are prepared to fight for you and your family.
What are the types of things QTMG, Personal Injury Lawyers do to protect an injured person's interests ?
We appoint a team to every file. Every case we accept is handled by a senior injury lawyer, a junior injury lawyer and at least one other legal professional such as a law clerk or paralegal. We fully assess every aspect of the case. We keep our clients informed of their rights and of the progress of the steps taken to advance their case. We are accessible to our clients. We handle every step associated with dealing with insurance companies and their representatives. We provide informed, reliable and timely legal advice. We provide the insurance company with your legal positions and supporting documentation needed to advance your case. We either complete the documents for you or assist you with completing all the necessary paperwork needed to bring the case to settlement.
We do all we can to deal with the bureaucracy so our clients can focus on recovering from their injuries. We try to complete all these things as efficiently and quickly as possible.
In many cases, our clients require the assistance of experts. We connect our clients with qualified and experienced service providers needed to prove injuries, losses and damages. At QTMG Personal Injury Lawyers, we have longstanding positive relationships with a great variety of medical and financial professionals who are often needed to complete assessments and provide professional reports such as medical legal reports, future care cost assessments, vocational assessments, actuarial assessments and financial loss assessments. The experts we hire for you review the facts of the case from their discipline's perspective and make informed professional
recommendations in the interest of maximizing benefit to the accident victims, as appropriate in all the circumstances.
When our clients make decisions to settle, they do so without pressure, with sound legal advice and based on information and opinions of health care providers, our lawyers and other needed professionals. This allows our clients to make informed decisions and have satisfaction that they received the best legal service available.
Choosing the right doctors and health care professionals is crucial to succeeding in any serious personal injury case !
When you are injured, you need the assistance of health care providers such as physiotherapists, surgeons and doctors. Not all medical doctors are equipped to manage cases involving serious injuries such as those caused in serious falls or car accidents. Why not ? Because serious injuries raise issues beyond just medical issues. Health care providers need to consider legal issues and insurance issues. The health care providers, for instance, need to consider which treatments are covered through OHIP and which are covered through private insurance policies so as to provide the best possible treatment.
Health care providers need to know how to manage health care claims, how to complete forms and how to assist with submitting claims for patients. They also need to know how to work with other health care providers and, just as vital, how to work with lawyers. Most importantly, health care providers must know how to clearly document the injuries, the symptoms experienced and the treatment provided to the injured persons they treat. A health care provider who does not wish to cooperate with an injured's person's personal injury lawyer is causing detriment to any personal injury case and is acting contrary to their patient's best interests.
One of the most important aspects of the lawyer and doctor relationship is cooperation so that when a personal injury lawyer seeks to prove the injuries, symptoms experienced and treatment provided to their clients, the doctor can provide, with guidance with the lawyer, a useful medical report that adequately summarizes the client's medical information. These are called medical-legal reports and contain the opinions of the health care provider that will be considered, if necessary, by a trial Justice. It takes experience to properly write such medical legal reports.
In many cases, insurance companies deny legitimate claims based on a lack of medical documentation. They do so as a means to control insurance costs and to ensure that legitimate claims are paid and the fraudulent ones are shut down.
This article briefly discusses the various complex issues that arise in most serious personal injury cases. In the context of personal injury law, experience, knowledge and relationships are everything. The lawyers at Quinn Thiele Mineault Grodzki LLP offer the skills and experience needed to maximize recovery for our clients. We practice personal injury law, that's all we do. We are experts at it. Call us for a free consultation and see how a no fee until you win agreement can provide you with access to justice and compensation. By: Marc Quinn, Personal injury lawyer, mediator and lecturer. 613-315-4878 or 613-563-1131.
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